The world’s 100 most successful studios in the world will be named in the 2008 edition of the Develop 100 next month.
Released at the start of April with that month’s issue of Develop, the Develop 100 is an establised and authoritative must-read book which is referred to year-round by the global publishing and development community.
Most of the knowledge available to keen gamers about the gaming industry can be of a pretty low quality. This is because that knowledge is third or fourth hand. As a very minimum it has been “spun” by a marketing department (I have done loads of this) and then “interpreted” by a journalist. But there is a way round this, keen enthusiasts can get their knowledge directly from the horses mouth, if they read the right blogs.
The “videogames as art” movement is a funny thing. Artsy wooks like myself love to wax philosophic about the potential that games have in terms of narration or eliciting meaningful, emotional player responses. We laud innovative game designers for forcing us to make morally ambiguous choices about ourselves and the characters around us. Unfortunately for us in the post-post-pre-metamodern crowd, games as a medium fall short in one crucial, yet easily overlooked, way: They only go half of the distance.
2K’s BioShock has won eight awards at the 6th Annual G.A.N.G. Awards, presented by The Game Audio Network Guild - a non-profit organisation supporting the game audio industry.
“Every now and again, life provides one of those great moments of satisfaction for which words are really inadequate to describe,” said BioShock composer Garry Schymann.
In an exclusive interview with Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid series, has made complains about 50GB BD not been sufficient. The Metal Gear Solid producer considers the Blu-Ray disc too small and that they had to make compromises in order to put the game on the 50GB BD. According to Hideo, the programmers had to compress some parts in the game to save disc space.
We’ve just had word from our source that a limited version of Home will go live at Midnight on the 31st of March. The new branch of Home, separate from the closed beta, will be called ‘Flat’, be open for everyone as a free download from the PSN and last for exactly 30 days.
Game designer Richard Lemarchand recently gave would-be developers at GDC insights into creating a successful game Naughty Dog style. He started out with the nitty gritty facts: “Have healthy code,” Lemarchand said because it makes the game development process smoother and more polished in the long run. This helps meet deadlines — something Naughty Dog has done time and time again. Lemarchand claimed that “collaboration is key” and gave examples of how designers and engineers, typically specialized and segregated groups, would move to each others desks to help one another. One of the interesting things about Naughty Dog is that it has no official “producers;” anyone at Naughty Dog can pitch ideas. No matter how bad the ideas are, they will always be respected.
Right after our demo of the PC version of Mass Effect, we had the chance to sit with BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuck for a quick catch-up on recent events. The two men were overjoyed to talk about Mass Effect’s success and critical reception, as well as the uplifting effect the EA buyout has had on the company.
Is PC gaming as we know it dead? Or just shifting course to be the dominant medium of the future? At Dave Perry’s “Lunch With the Luminaries” Peter Molyneux, Phil Harrison, Chris Taylor, Raph Koster and Neil Young discussed what path PC gaming will take in the coming years.
In a surprising move, technology giant Intel has acquired engine team Project Offset, according to a brief statement on the official webpage of the often buzzed-about graphical game engine.
The announcement, from Project Offset’s Sam McGrath, simply explains: “Today we have some major news to announce. Intel has acquired Offset Software. Yes, you read it correctly! Project Offset is going strong and we are excited about things to come. Stay tuned.”
